Considerations regarding the standardization of services

Abstract

The present article provides an overview of European Union preoccupations regarding services standardization, in the way they were perceived by the authors with the occasion of their participation at the Madrid World Café organized as part of the on-going project "CEN Horizontal European Services Standardization Strategy" (CHESSS). Authors share the idea largely supported by experts and various stakeholders that there is a potential for services standardisation to offer advantages in terms of fostering com-petitiveness and improving satisfaction of consumers and client companies needs, as well as in removing barriers to trade, particularly within the European Union internal market. To date, this potential remains unfulfilled, in part because service providers seek to conserve the information asymmetry that protect them against increased competitive pressures and in part due to a lack of under-standing of the nature and process of standardisation and the benefits it can bring This is also the situation in Romania, and thus policy makers are urged to give to services standardization an importance equivalent with the role of services for the socio-economic development.